On September 17, I filed a sworn ethics complaint against Rep. Lauren Boebert with the House Ethics Committee. It isn't built on rumor. It's built on House disbursement records, FEC filings, text messages, and named sources who gave written statements. This is the same kind of paper trail American Muckrakers has used in every complaint we've filed.
Boebert didn't answer the records. She answered by accusing me of a crime.
Her official House press release was published on a taxpayer-funded government website says I "likely committed perjury and broke a federal law." Read that again: a sitting member of Congress used her official office to accuse a private citizen of a federal crime, in writing, on a .gov domain paid for by the public. I committed no crime. My complaint is sworn under 28 U.S.C. § 1746, the standard federal perjury exposure for a false statement, and it asks the Ethics Committee to do its job and investigate.
That's not a rebuttal. That's a threat dressed up as a press release.
The Manufactured Restraining Order
A few days later, the New York Post ran a story claiming Boebert has had a restraining order against me since 2022. That's false, and it's false in a way that's easy to check.
The case the Post is pointing to is a Garfield County, Colorado filing from June 2022. It was **dismissed on July 20, 2022.** No permanent order was ever entered. No order was ever served on me. Nothing has been in effect for over four years. The Post's story links to a record that isn't about an active order against me — because there isn't one.
According to the sheriff's return of service and the court's own docket, Judge Paul Metzger dismissed the case and denied any permanent order at a hearing that neither Boebert nor her counsel bothered to attend.
That's the pattern here: an accusation gets made, it lands in a headline, and the underlying paperwork tells a completely different story — if anyone bothers to read it.
I Sent Her a Cease-and-Desist
On September 22, I sent Boebert, her chief of staff, and her staff a formal cease-and-desist and retraction demand. It's not a strongly worded email. It's a legal notice, and it demands specific things:
- Stop saying I committed perjury or broke federal law.
- Correct both press releases, and every outlet that ran them, within 10 days.
- Stop claiming any restraining order exists against me.
- Preserve every record, including the release her office has already quietly pulled from its own site.
A false accusation that a named individual committed perjury and violated federal law imputes criminal conduct. That's defamatory per se under the law of most states, North Carolina included, and I've put her on formal notice ahead of a defamation lawsuit. If her office doesn't correct the record, I expect to file.
Why This Matters Beyond Me
I could let this go. It would be easier. But there's a reason a member of Congress reaches for "you committed a crime" instead of "here's why your records are wrong": it works. It's designed to make the next person who finds something uncomfortable in her filings think twice before publishing it. It's designed to make donors, sources, and watchdogs flinch.
American Muckrakers doesn't flinch. That's the whole premise of the organization — we go where the disbursement records lead, we name what we find, and when a sitting member of Congress responds by trying to criminalize the person doing the finding, we don't back down. We push back, in the open, with the paper trail to back it up.
But pushing back against a member of Congress with a taxpayer-funded office, taxpayer-funded staff, and taxpayer-funded lawyers takes something I don't have an unlimited supply of: legal counsel to carry the ethics complaint through the process and defend against exactly the kind of retaliation she's already started.
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$25, $50, $100 or $250 — whatever tou can.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for standing with me.
David B. Wheeler
President, American Muckrakers
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Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes. The allegations described above are allegations; no finding of wrongdoing has been made, and every person named is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
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